Netflix has decided to remake a hugely popular mystery-thriller movie, which was released only four years ago, in 2021. Of course, the original film came from France, and Netflix’s remake will be English-language. But that once again raises the debate about how and when foreign TV and movie content is being remade, vs. presented in its original form. Netflix is at the center of that debate, no doubt, having made some of the biggest strides with offering TV shows and movies that are big on ga lobal scale, no matter which country they originally come from (Squid Game and Money Heist being two great examples).
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The French movie Black Box (or “Boîte noire“) was directed by Yann Gozlan and was released on September 8, 2021, in France and Belgium. It was a success, earning around $9.7M (in US dollars). Now it will be remade as a Netflix original, with Oscar-nominated director Tim Fehlbaum (September 5) set to helm it. It will be produced by 1.21‘s Andrew Mittman (Elvis, Wednesday), as well as Wassim Beji, Thibault Gast, and Matthias Weber, who produced the original. 1.21’s Kai Dolbashian will serve as exec producer.
The film will follow a black box analyst sent to investigate a horrific plane crash. However, when he begins to replay the plane’s last recordings, he begins to hear “chilling audio anomalies that no one else seems willing to acknowledge.” But as the analyst listens deeper, he begins to spot inconsistencies in the recording. That leads him to revise his theory that terrorists may be responsible – a change of heart that nefarious forces don’t want to see. Before long, the analyst is in the middle of a deep conspiracy that could end his life, before he finds the truth.
Black Box is the kind of stripped-down mystery-thriller that will actually play well for Netflix. It doesn’t require many elaborate set pieces or major action sequences, but rather the high tension and rampant paranoia of an espionage-thriller. The French film also threw in the requisite twists and turns that kept viewers guessing, and at the end, still managed to land the plane (so to speak).
The time for a thriller that marries conspiracy and plane crashes has never been better, given the high-profile incidents that have plagued the aviation industry in the last year, alone. Viewers are primed and ready for a cathartic story that validates their flying frustrations.
Netflix already struck pay dirt with Carry-On (2024), the single-setting thriller where a TSA agent (Taron Egerton) is threatened into aiding a ruthless terrorist (Jason Bateman) smuggle a deadly weapon onto a plane. Black Box could be a similar vein of film, just aimed at a more prestige-level viewer.
Black Box (US) is in development over at Netflix.
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